Whatsername
by Queen-morganalefay
Summary: One-shot songfic to Greenday's Whatsername. When Robin goes insane due to the death of a loved one, what and who would save him? Set in the future, when they're grown. R


Thought I ran into you down on the street

Then it turned out to only be a dream

Flaming red hair, glowing green eyes, tan skin, petite form all mixing and shadowing and haunting him as he tries to keep his mind focused, but her memory has destroyed his concentration, destroyed his soul, destroyed his mind, and now it's nothing but a turmoil of death and destruction, the pain he takes because he deserves it and the pain he gives to those who don't. He's tried to forget, tried to drown out her summer rain laugh, her innocent smile, but he's only half way to killing and bandaging and silencing his bleeding heart.

_Shut up, shut up! Don't think about her and about who you used to be._

I made a point to burn all of the photographs.

She went away and then I took a different path.

And the burning, the burning of all those old memories…burning those pictures felt like burning his skin and his eyes and his soul…somewhere she was burning, too, burning with those disintegrating pictures, and becoming no more than a ghost, a shadow on the wall following. And he would chase her off and she would come back, laughing at him like it was all just a game.

Once he got the news, how she had died in that battle, far away from him, light-years away, so far away… then the boy hero was gone. Why should he care anymore if there was going to be so much pain ahead, and he would be in that room with the memories of her and the shadows…

_The light, must find the light…_

But there is no light anymore for him, for the broken leader, for the fallen, for the slain. Deathwing now, terror of the city and holder of regrets, fighting the good in him and the memories as he fights everything, as he is defeated and taken away…away, away…Lost in thought in you room, lost in time defending yourself from her memory in your room.

I remember the face, but I can't recall the name.

Now I wonder how Whatsername has been.

_Don't think of her, don't give her a name…don't identify her with any others…identify no one… don't even remember your own name…_

Her face, so clear in his mind, her voice in his head, her, her soft touch…but not her name, never her name, never again would he think her name, speak her name. There was too much pain, too much hurt buried in the back of his mind where he laid her memory, and now that graveyard was open again…but he didn't remember opening the crypt, invoking the spirits, recalling the memories, so why now?

Seemed that she disappeared without a trace.

Did she ever marry ol' Whatshisface?

That night she said goodbye, goodbye, and the last he ever saw of her, the night she was to marry the boy he used to be. She said that her people were in trouble, she had to save them…and she left him there on that cold, rainy night outside of the chapel, her emerald orbs sad and his masked as the always were, watching her fly off into the darkness.

_No! Not that night, not that time…never again, never again…_

Remember, whatever.

It seems like forever ago.

And he would drown here in this pit of memories. He would fade out, vanish, and leave, never return, never to return again in any form or state of mind. Then there was another intruding upon his hiding place, the hollow space inside his mind, another calling him by the name he barely remembered. The very identity he had left behind…

_Robin_, the voice called his skull, melancholy and soothing, and recognition reached him, the vague concept of understanding. It was another that had made him recall his love's face, her laugh, her voice…

"Raven…" he whispered to the form inside his ravished, turned, and tormented mind, trying to find her, trying to shove her help away…no help for the weary. No help. No rest. No strength.

Remember, whatever.

It seems like forever ago.

But she was forcing him, forcing the flashes and the memories, the emotions and the pain that would eventually become his vindication and damnation. Red hair, green eyes, glowing skin, white eyes, dark magic, furious starbolts…

The regrets are useless in my mind.

She's in my head.

I must confess: the regrets are useless.

She's in my head.

He knew he had hurt that ghost that haunted him, remembered hurting her, ignoring her for so long, so long…it was fear that he would hurt her, that she would be the target of one of his enemies through him…it was so long ago. He had hurt others because he had hurt her, and to numb the pain…he would never be able to take the pain of her death.

_Robin…_came the call again. Not a question, but a command, an order to be what he used to be, not lying in a dead state of mind in a room way too bright, his own padded room, his cell…yes, his cell, because he had cracked and hurt and had been hurt…because he had abandoned the way of the hero. And the dark figure was still pulling his dark secrets from him, trying to lessen his poison, his venom, the death of his heart.

I remember the face, but can't recall the name.

Now I wonder how Whatsername has been.

"Let me forget her, Raven…"

_Speak her name._

He couldn't, not hers, not that angel from the other world, not his love that had left him, not her…

_Speak her name, Robin._

From so long ago and in the darkest night

If my memory serves me right

Pulled from him, all the strength it took to say it, his mind shattered, his heart broken, his strength taken, point lost, and suddenly the lost name filled him as he looked into Raven's eyes, Raven who was pulling him from the prison, his mind's prison.

"Starfire…" he said slowly, the name final and familiar and strange, a name finally put to the haunting image, his love, his lost, the dead, but never forgotten completely.

I'll never turn back time

Forgetting you

But not the tide.


End file.
